On my Wanhao I have added a Bakelite shim between the stepper motor and the heat transfer bar.

The risk with that is that it will prevent enough heat being removed from the bar and you will suffer melt back in the filament tube. Removing heat from that bar is what the fan does and it is critical to get it right. If too much heat is removed the filament will not flow and if not enough is removed then the filament will melt too far up the tube.

With a damaged fan the stepper will get hotter than normal but still probably not too hot and it will not print because of melt back.

Too hot to touch is quite a low temperature, certainly 60c is too hot to hold for more than a couple of seconds but a stepper is fine at that all day long.